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// Back to Titanic 
// Story: Titanic 
// by Imperator Chiashi Zane 
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The ship was a majestic tower.  From the ground, it blocked most of the sky.  What the ship itself didn’t block, the orange funnels did.  Crewponies darted back and forth, massive Earth ponies dragging heavy loads, nimble Pegasi flicking back and forth carrying light loads up and down.  Unicorns ensuring that tie-downs were secured.  Even Gryphons and Zebras made appearances, along with a hoof-full of broad shouldered Minotaurs and the odd Thestral.  And every-one looked like an ant on the awe inspiring size of the cruise ship.
The date was April tenth, Nine-Twelve, I was sixteen, and to that day had never before seen so many ponies in one place.  Crowds of them, swarming so thick that law officers had to clear a path for my mother’s carriage.  It was a fine carriage, designed for luxury.  A Renault.  Four passengers, with a small steam engine to assist the driver on hills.  I rather liked that car.  A shame it went down with the ship.
A white carriage, the Renault, eased up to the dock, the gray Earth pony pulling it smiling as he came to a stop and engaged the wheel lock.  Slipping out of the harness, he moved around to the side and tugged the door open, letting in the sheer volume of the crowds.  It was here that the aging pony felt most at home, not travelling through the cavernous expanses of land between country estates.
He reached a hoof up and carefully took hold of a white leather boot, trimmed in purple lace.  Stepping back, he helped a young mare climb down from the carriage, baring her white travelling dress, trimmed with more purple lace.  As she reached the ground, she raised her head, tilting a broad-brimmed white hat with a series of purple Pegasus feathers laced to the crest.  Her blue eyes shone in the sun, one slightly covered by a light red curl of mane.  Her sun-colored fur shone under the efforts of her mother’s careful application of makeup and glitter.  Her lips curled up in a dignified smile, “I don’t see what all the fuss is about, Hoof.  It doesn’t look any bigger than the Mauretania.”
Behind her, a stallion in a dark travelling suit slipped out of the carriage, oozing arrogance and money as he stepped onto the concrete, “you can be blasé about a lot of things Rose, but not about Titanic.  It’s over a hundred feet longer… Yes, Kale may have been educated, but he never liked to use ‘higher language’, like meters…  and far more luxurious.  It has Squash courts, a Prench café, Griffonian baths… It has everything,” the stallion turned around and held out a hooficured forehoof, helping a middle aged mare down.  Truth Anwitt, Rose’s mother, and a social empress, from a prominent family in Fillydelphia.  Recently widowed, she held the stance of a dignitary, her own tan fur glistening in the light.
Kale turned to Truth, “Your daughter is much harder to impress than you ever were,” he pointed at a puddle, “Mind your step.”
“So, Kale, they say this ship is unsinkable,” gears turned in the young mare’s head.  She had spent most of the ride reading everything she could about the ship without making it obvious to the other occupants of the carriage.  It wasn’t that they objected, necessarily, to her reading.  They just preferred that it be upper-class literature, rather than the gritty, factual, detailed forms about the ship she was going to be sailing on.  She didn’t buy into the hype, although she was fairly confident that the ship wouldn’t sink.
“Oh, she is unsinkable.  Celestia herself couldn’t sink this ship,” he spoke with the pride of a host, providing a special experience.
Behind him, climbing off the back of the carriage, Kale’s personal valet, Spicer Lovejoy, dropped to the ground.  The Earth pony stood just over two meters tall, fur the color of slate, and a short cropped mane and tail the color of tar bringing out his steely eyes.  Strapped to either side of Spicer’s flanks, almost blending into his cutie-marks, were a pair of dueling pistols.  A pair of Pegasus mares in red trimmed white dresses joined him, Rose and Truth’s personal maids.
As the group moved away from the carriage, Rose giving the driver, Helping Hoof, a last hug before joining the group.  A porter rushed up to them, checking something off on his clipboard, “Sir, you’ll have to check your baggage through the main terminal, down that way,” he pointed into the crowd, and was about to continue talking when he was silenced by Kale pushing a folded bill into the stallion’s breast pocket and patting it gently.
“There’s a five bit note,” five bits was quite a lot back in those days.  Roughly the equivalent of me giving someone a hundred bit note.  The porter blinked slowly for a second, as Kale added, “I put my faith in you, good sir.  See my stallion here,” he indicated Lovejoy.
“Yes sir.  My pleasure, Sir,” the porter moved away, and Kale smiled.  He loved the effect money had on the unwashed masses.
As the porter reached Lovejoy, he looked up at the towering stallion, who spoke in a measured tone, like every word he said was a fifty bit poker chip and he was holding a pair of twos, “These trunks here, and twelve more in the carriage.  We’ll have all this lot up in the rooms, and the carriage in the hold.”
The porter flinched, then his horn started glowing as he summoned several of the large Griffons and Minotaurs to help load everything.  Kale waved Lovejoy to join him as the group approached the boarding ramp.
“We’d better hurry.  This way ladies,” his pocket-watch slipped back into his pocket, the silver surface sliding smoothly into his breast pocket.
Bearing heavy saddlebags, filled with all the things too fragile for the baggage handlers, the two maids and Lovejoy followed the three noble Unicorns through the crowds.  Kale led the way, weaving past carts, carriages, and passengers.  At this point it was mostly second-class and steerage, as well as well-wishers.  Above them, the majority of the first-class passengers are staying clear of the smelly mass by using elevated boarding bridges.
On their way, they passed a line of steerage passengers lined up between rope barriers, with Unicorn inspectors sweeping across them, looking for lice.
A well dressed, though obviously second class, stallion stood behind a camera, cranking the handle on the side with one hoof as another gestured at his young bride, who stood before the ship, “Look up at the ship, darling.  Yes, like that.  You’re amazed, can’t believe how big it is.  Like a mountain.  That’s great.”  It wasn’t.  The mare lacked even the slightest hint of an acting bone in her body, and as such did an overly dramatic, though patently false expression of amazement, hooves raised in the air.
Kale went to scoff at the terrible acting, but was interrupted by a pair of colts, both with cherry red manes and brown coats, barreling past him.  One skidded under him, almost clipping his chest with a flick of a muddy red tail.  A moment later, a large brown stallion with a green mane, chopped almost to his scalp, barely managed to side-step in front of the noble.
“Steady!”
“Sorry squire,” the stallion charged after the two colts, “You two get back here!  If we miss the boat, I’m selling the both of you to the mines!”
Kale spat on the ground, “Steerage swine.  Apparently he missed his annual bath,” the unicorn raised his nose high into the air, keeping it at such an angle that his muzzle didn’t entirely block his view of the ground, just in case.”
“Honestly Kale, if you hadn’t weren’t always booking everything at the last possible instant, we could have gone through the terminal instead of running along the dock like some squalid immigrant family,” Truth raised an eyebrow as she sidestepped a suspicious looking pile of something brown on the decking.
Kale glanced back for a split second, “All part of my charm, Truth.  At any rate, it was my darling fiancee’s beauty rituals which made us late.”
“You told me to change.  Why I would have been happy in nothing at all, were it appropriate to do so.”
“Yes, but dear, I couldn’t let you wear black on sailing day.  It’s bad luck.”
She wrinkled her nose, “You’re wearing black.”
He sighed.  Why had he picked the most strong-willed filly he could have laid eyes on, “Because it’s traditional for stallions to wear black dear.”
She stuck her tongue out at him, “I felt like black.”
Kale guided her off to one side, away from a carriage pulled by four massive stallions, labelled Marmalade.  Food for the chefs.
“Here we go,” he pushed closer to the ship, “I’ve pulled every string I could to book us on the grandest ship in history, in her most luxurious suites…”  Rose faked a smile.  “And you act like you’re going to your execution.”
The great wall of the ship loomed over them.  An iron wall, tall and imposing as it curved out gently over her head.  Black all the way up.  It reminded her of a prison, the way the railing on the top was just barely visible, peeking out over the curled lip.  Kale motioned up the broad gang-plank, “”Come along dear.  We wouldn’t want the ship to leave without us.”
She trotted up the ramp in as dignified a manner as she could, entering the massive iron doors to D deck in a cloud of overwhelming dread.  It was the ship of dreams, to everypony else.  To me, it was a slave ship, taking me back to America in chains.  Gilded though it was, it was still a prison, still chains.
He took her hoof in his, escorting her into the dim lighting of the ship.  Outwardly, I was everything a well-raised filly should have been.  Inside, I was screaming.
She shuddered as the dread dug into her back, pressing down on her more than any saddle-bags ever had.  She flinched as the steam horns four decks above, and up on the towering funnels, screamed the departure warning.